Baxter, Stephen Xeelee 02 Timelike Infinity

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sea.
"The details have never become clear. Bolder should have emerged from hyperspace into a region
surrounded by Spline warships, all bearing gravity-wave starbreaker technology... He failed to do so.
Bolder survived, escaped.
"Starbreakers were used. In the confusion and panic, they brushed the Qax sun. It was enough to cause
the sun to become unstable ultimately, to nova.
"The Qax were forced to flee. Dozens of individuals died in the exodus. Our power was lost, and the
Occupation of Earth crumbled..."
Jasoft Parz, bewildered and disoriented as he was, could not help but exult at this.
A gray light, without form and structure, spread into existence around him... No, not around him, he
realized; he was part of this light: it was as if this were the gray light that shone beneath reality, the light
against which all phenomena are shadows. His panic subsided, to be replaced by a sense of calm power;
he felt as if he were light-years wide and yet no wider than an atom, a million years old and yet fresher
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than a child's first breath.
"Qax. What the hell is happening?"
"Causality stress, Parz. Perceptual dysfunction. Causality is not a simple phenomenon. When objects are
once joined, they become part of a single quantum system... and they must remain joined forever
thereafter, via superlight quantum effects. You should imagine you are walking across a beach, calling into
existence a trail of footsteps as you go. The footsteps may fade with time as you pass on, but each of
them remains bound to you by the threads of quantum functions."
"And when I pass out of my own region of spacetime?"
"The threads are cut. Causal bonds are broken and must be re-formed..."
"Dear God, Qax. Is this pain worth it, just to travel through time?"
"To achieve one's goals: yes," the Qax said quietly.
"Finish the story," Jasoft Parz said.
"Finish it?"
"Why are the Xeelee building a way out of the universe? What are they seeking?"
"I suspect if we knew the answer to that," the Qax said, "we would know much of the secret truth of our
universe. But we do not. The story must remain unfinished, Jasoft Parz.
"But consider this. What if the Xeelee are not seeking somethingbeyond their Ring but are fleeing
something inthis universe?
"What do Xeelee fear, do you suppose?"
Parz, buffeted, disoriented, could find no reply.
The Spline warship surged through time.
Chapter 9
The Friend of Wigner, Jaar, was waiting for Michael Poole at the entrance to theCrab's grounded boat.
Poole stood on the boat's exit ramp, bathed in eerie Jovian light. He looked out at the waiting young
man, the scatter of Xeelee construction-material buildings in the distance, the glimpses of ancient
stones and over it all the looming, perfect curve of Jupiter.
He felt too old for this.
He'd got through the events of the previous day the landing, the encounter with Miriam, the
bombardment of strangeness on a kind of psychic momentum. But the momentum had gone now; he'd
emerged only reluctantly from a troubled sleep to face the dangers, the pressures of the day, the need to
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find a way to deal with Miriam's presence here.
Miriam had spent the sleeping period in the boat. Harry had had the decency to abandon his
rights-for-AIs rhetoric for a few hours and had gone into stasis to leave them alone. But Miriam and
Michael hadn't slept together. What were they, kids? They had talked, and held each other's hands, and
finally stumbled to separate bunks. Somehow an acquiescence to lust didn't seem the right reaction to a
century of separation, the renewal of an antique, and combative, relationship.
He wished he hadn't let Harry talk him into this jaunt. He would have exchanged all he had seen and
learned to return to the calmness of his station in the Oort Cloud, his slow tinkering at the fringes of
exotic-matter physics.
Of course if he got his head cleaned out, as Harry had done, he'd be able to face all this with a fresh eye.
Well, the hell with that.
Poole walked down the ramp and onto the tough English grass. The Wigner's Friend smiled at him;
Poole saw a young man, tall and whiplash thin, dressed in the standard-issue pink coverall. Bony wrists
and ankles protruded from the coarse material. Under a high, cleanshaven dome of a scalp he shared the
pallid, hothouse complexion of Shira, and his eyes were watery-brown. Jaar's stance was a little
awkward. Poole guessed that even fifteen centuries hence someone of this height and build would spend
his life ducking to avoid looking clumsy, but there was something beyond that, something about the way
the Friend's legs looked bowed
Rickets. Was it possible that such a curse had been allowed to return to the Earth? Poole's heart moved.
"You are Michael Poole. I am honored to meet you."
"And you're Jaar the guide Shira promised?"
"I am a physical sciences specialist. I trust you slept peacefully."
"Not very." Poole grinned. "I have too many questions."
Jaar nodded with the solemnity of the young. "You have a fine mind, Mr. Poole; it is natural for you to
question "
"And," Poole went on sharply, "Shira said she'd send someone who could provide answers."
Jaar smiled obscurely, and in that expression Poole recognized something of the abstractedness of Shira.
Jaar seemed disengaged, uninterested in this little duel, or indeed in any form of interpersonal contact. It
was as if he had much more important things weighing on his mind.
"Shira did say that there was little purpose trying to hide from you anything whose existence you had
already deduced."
"So you've been sent along to humor an old man?"
"No onesent me, Mr. Poole," Jaar said. "I volunteered for the honor."
"It's me who's honored, Jaar."
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With a little bow Jaar invited Poole to walk with him; side by side, they strolled across the pink-stained
grass toward the heart of the earth-craft.
Poole said, "You're only the second Friend I've met... and yet you seem very similar, in disposition, to
Shira. Forgive my rudeness, Jaar, but are all you Friends so alike?"
"I don't think so, Mr. Poole."
"Call me Michael. But you have an inner calm, a strange certainty even after running the gauntlet of the
Qax Navy; even after falling willy-nilly through a hole in spacetime..."
"I am sure that what we have come here to do is right."
Poole nodded. "Your Project. But you're not allowed to tell me what that is."
"I'm something of a scientist myself; like you, I was born with the curse of an inquiring mind. It must be
infuriating to have an area of knowledge blocked from you like this... I apologize." Jaar's smile was
smooth, bland, unyielding; his bald head seemed oddly egglike to Poole, seamless and lacking
information. "But you must not think we are all alike, Michael. The Friends are from very different
backgrounds, disparate circumstances. Granted we were selected for this mission on the grounds of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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